A bit of this, a bit of thatBen Schott snaps up a fun new collection of 'unconsidered trifles'

Published 5:30 am, Sunday, August 15, 2004

'MISCELLANY: A mixture of various things: hodgepodge: medley"— that's the dictionary definition. The word is redolent of the 19th century. Americans tend to accent the first syllable, Brits the second.

Miscellany is also the operative word in the title of two addictive little books by Ben Schott, a British photographer and self-described "snapper-up of unconsidered trifles."

Schott's Original Miscellany,published in 2002 in the United Kingdom, was a best seller there and became a cult favorite in this country when it appeared last year. Now comes a sequel, Schott's Food & Drink Miscellany. A sports miscellany is supposedly in the works.

To call these short, handsomely designed volumes "trivia books" doesn't convey their eccentricity and Schott's imaginative principles of selection. Make that imaginative nonprinciples of selection. You would be hard-pressed to come up with a more heterogeneous collection of oddments.

Open the Original Miscellany at random and you find, for example, an explanation of bra sizes followed by a schematic of Dante's Inferno, a list of the seven dwarfs preceded by a chart showing the degrees of Freemasonry (degree 32: Grand Inspector Inquisitor Commander).

Conceivably useful information — countries where you drive on the left, the Linnaean Order of Classification — abuts curious but useless factoids, such as the color scheme of the flag of Guadeloupe or words with vowels that appear in alphabetical order (hint: one is an adjective applied to those who avoid excessive consumption of food and drink). Incidentally, the diagram illustrating how to tie a bow tie is impossible to follow.

Predictably, the selections display an Anglophile tilt. There's a helpful catalog of all the English monarchs, but I can't conceive of many Americans who will care about a list of Elizabeth II's suppliers. Castrol, incidentally, is the official supplier of the queen's "motor lubricants." Schott doesn't say, but I'm guessing Boodles is the official supplier of "Prince Philip's lubricants."

Historical references mix with the contemporary, high culture lies down with low. Thus, you get both the layout of a symphony orchestra and the weight limits of boxing categories (if you see me in the ring, it will be as a junior middleweight). You find both poets laureate and emoticons, those sequences of keyboard characters used as shorthand in e-mail. If someone concludes a message with :-# you know he or she is "wearing braces." Valuable info, I suppose, if you're online trolling for dates.

Readers coming to Schott's books for the first time will likely want to pick up the Original Miscellany. If you loved it and want more, or have a special interest in food and drink, reach for the new one.

In the Food & Drink Miscellany Schott interprets his subject matter broadly. He defines the types of vegetarian diets and records the amount of caffeine in various drinks. Predictable fare. But he also includes famous people supposedly saved by the Heimlich maneuver (among them Ronald Reagan, Cher and, alas, Dick Vitale). And we get the final meal requests of

There's news you can use — the way to ask for the bill in 22 languages — and news that's perfectly useless, such as "things that have caused Homer Simpson to drool 'Mmm ... ' " These include "the Land of Chocolate" and "urinal-fresh."

Homer Simpson is by no means the most distinguished figure whose words are quotedin Schott's Food & Drink Miscellany.

We learn that a youthful George Washington, in a fit of self-improvement, began keeping a commonplace book. In it, among other things, he recorded "Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation."

Two examples:

"Put not another bite into your Mouth till the former be swallowed. Let not your Morsels be too big for the jowls."

"Drink not too leisurely nor yet too hastily. Before and after Drinking wipe your Lips, breathe not then or Ever with too Great a Noise, for it is uncivil."

Good rules then, good rules today.

Entertainment Weekly called the Original Miscellany "the first really great bathroom book of the 21st century." But that suggests information that's meant to be read and forgotten. The value of these books is to supply you with anecdotal curiosities with which to impress your friends at dinner parties.

Here's my favorite from the Food & Drink Miscellany. It involves French President François Mitterrand and the ortolan, the small bird known in this country as the bunting. France has laws against hunting and eating ortolans. The French routinely flout those laws, Schott tells us. He continues:

Suffering from end-stage cancer of the prostate, Mitterrand anticipated his imminent death and planned for a final banquet. On 31 December 1995, four dishes were served to the President and his guests: Marennes oysters, foie gras, roast capon, and ortolan. The traditional method of preparing ortolan is as curious as it is barbaric. The tiny birds are caught alive and kept in a dark box (or blinded) so that they gorge themselves continuously on grain. Once distended to way beyond their natural size the birds are drowned in Cognac, plucked and roasted. After their heads have been cut or bitten off, ortolans are eaten whole (bones and all) from underneath a napkin — to hide the shame of such cruelty and gluttony from the sight of God. It is considered excessive to eat more than one ortolan, but on the night of his last meal the dying President ate a second — supposedly the last food to pass his lips before he died a week later.

Maybe you should wait until the dishes are cleared before you tell this story. Now pass the Jolly Ranchers.